8 February 2017

Red pea soup

And
we're still on The VegHog's Cheap Eats Week 2017.
Hopefully you are enjoying it and getting tips for cheaper eating.
Actually homecooked vegetarian meals are always quite economical, if
you have a basic larder of spices and a couple of sauces. Anyhow, I
feel good if I can save a bit money sometimes.

Today's recipe is
a Finnish style pea soup that requires quite a bit of patience. This
particular soup I cooked for about seven hours before serving, so
make sure you have a minimum of about four hours to spare. These red
fox peas seemed to be a bit more sturdy than regular dried green
peas. Many of these red peas stayed intact even after such a long
cooking time. The target is to get many peas turn into full mash and
become one with the vegetable stock forming a very thick soup. You
don't need much of this soup to be full and this definitely is a very
cheap soup to make.

Pea soup is
traditionally eaten in Finland on Thursdays and on Shrove Tuesday,
and it's also often served to the soldiers in the Finnish army.

Red pea soup

Ingredients

300 g dried red
fox maple peas

2 large onions

3 garlic cloves

1 tsp vegetable
stock extract

1 tbsp ground
mustard seeds

Salt to taste

Ground white
pepper to taste

Dash of liquid
smoke

Sprinkle of smoked
paprika

2 tbsp tomato
purée

Method

Soak the dried
peas overnight. Fill a large saucepan with water and boil the peas
there heavily for the first 15 minutes.

Chop the onions
and garlic and add the onions and the vegetable stock extract to the
saucepan and let simmer under the lid for several hours.

Who is The VegHog?

A vegetarian hobby cook and urban gardener born in Finland, currently living in Denmark. I try to develop my cooking skills by making a wide variety of veggie dishes, some of them traditional and some new creations. My favourites include veggie burgers, squashes, organic and local produce, cider, spelt, rye, pizzas, pasta dishes, risottos and sea-buckthorn.
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